Savage Minds

Stephen Bezruchka, faculty in the School of Public Health at the University of Washington in Seattle, discusses his latest book, Inequality Kills Us All: COVID-19's Health Lessons for the World (2022, Routledge), analysing some of the socio-medical terrain as to why the United States does so poorly in health measures. Discussing how the United States has by far the highest levels of inequality among wealthy countries, Bezruchka details how living in a society with entrenched hierarchies increases the negative effects of illnesses for everyone. Bezruchka covers how a fair system of taxation, maternal leave, support for child well-being, and universal access to healthcare are just some of the remedies that can reverse the downward trend in the health of the American population. Tracing his experiences in the field outside of western medicine, Bezruka frames how social issues like stress have worsened public health whereby social issues rarely figure into understanding public health. Observing how during the COVID-19 pandemic western societies leaned towards individualistic rather than collective solutions to the public health crisis, Bezruchka notes that the United States has worse health outcomes than some 50 other nations despite spending almost half of the world's healthcare bill. 

Tonje Gjevjon, Norwegian artist and filmmaker, and Christina Ellingsen, women's rights activist and publisher, discuss the current gender identity laws in Norway that affect women. Noting her cancellation from the Norwegian arts scene for her political stance on gender identity, Gjevjon considers how she potentially faces criminal charges and jail time for posting on Facebook that men cannot be lesbians. Gjevjon ellucidates how men LARPing (live-action role-playing) as lesbians are simply invigorating age-old homophobia directed at women that has taken a virtual format. Ellingsen discusses how she has been investigated for the past eight months for stating that sex is immutable, a biological truism. Although the case against her has been dropped, Ellingsen critiques how the ongoing case against Gjevjon demonstrates what is at stake today: that men claiming to be lesbians is the latest form of sexual harassment against lesbians. Ellingsen observes how this form of police and judiciary menace requires that women remain silent or risk their livelihoods and reputation in challenging the misogyny that has usurped public space over the past decade in Norway. Discussing the megalomania at the heart of gender identity politics today, Ellingsen picks apart the falsehood at the heart of this debate: that the technological control of nature is even possible. Both Gjevjon and Ellingsen vituperate the more horrific socio-political picture afoot: that of western societies foisting upon vulnerable individuals the lie of “sex change” as the mass sterilisation of this population is both encouraged and normalised.

Peter Phillips, a Professor Emeritus of Political Sociology at Sonoma State University and former Director of Project Censored (1996 to 2010), discusses his book Giants: The Global Power Elite (2018) examines the concentration of wealth internationally whereby corporations and giant investment firms—multi-trillion dollar investment companies—have the money and power to restrict the parameters of what is possible for legacy news to cover. Elaborating on how news is framed by the one-half of one per cent of the world’s population, Phillips notes how those who invest in big media (Comcast, Disney, Time Warner, 21st Century Fox, Bertelsmann, and Viacom/CBS) further protect their profits—to include these same shareholders’ investments in war—whereby news stories are modelled around the narrow parameters of these investors’ financial interests. Philipps considers the repression of news today by the collaborative efforts of intelligence agencies working to protect and expand capital (eg. governments’ “vital interests”) along with the military and political elite within every country. In this way, capital investments are shared among an international gobal elite whereby large companies like Hearst and The New York Times are primarily interested in protecting wealth as they hire public relations firms and adverising agencies—to include the Omnicom Group, WPP, and Interpublic Group—to package and release news whereby “managed news stories that are preempting objective new coverage.”

Kellie-Jay Keen, aka Posie Parker, a British women's right campaigner, and Heather Brunskell-Evans, a feminist academic, discuss the class division within British feminism that has largely pivoted around and taken aim at Keen’s persona and activism. Giving historical perspective beginning with an event to which she had been invited at a Women’s Place UK event in Wales in the Spring 2018, Keen discusses how the manner in which she was disinvited was “libel-proof” where by WPUK effectively issued a statement that slated Keen as a racist without directly using these words. Noting that WPUK operates through “guilt by association,” Keen expatiates how this organisation weaponised the notion that guilt by association is “something that you can actually do to someone.” Keen discusses the events of January 2019 where she was accused of having “collaborated with the far-right” where in fact she and Julia Long undertook political activism to hold a political figure to account for having advocated the placement of a violent male prisoner in a woman’s prison and she had organised a public event for women to come and speak publicly. She observes, “If we start saying that free speech and the right to assemble and the right for free association…are something that the right do, then what does that say about the left? Because it’s not good.” Brunskell-Evans chronicles the purist policing within British feminism warning how this will leave a terrible legacy for future generations because the there is an attempt to frame the split in British feminism as merely “a bunch of women fighting with each other” which eschews what is actually going on. Elaborating how disagreement is part of any healthy liberal democracy, Brunskell-Evans expounds that these leftist feminists’ monstering of Keen has postured itself as disagreement when it is anything but. Brunskell-Evans details how these leftist feminists have engaged in policing and surveillance of thought together with ad hominem and defamatory attacks of Keen in what has been a uniquely authoritarian move in the guise of shutting down free speech and the grassroots movement that Keen facilitates.

Julie Ponesse, author of My Choice: The Ethical Case Against Covid-19 Vaccine Mandates (2021), discusses the field of ethics and the role that fear played within the landscape of a global pandemic and how this stalls the ability of humans to understand and process new information, inclines us towards pessimism, and moves society towards a certain level of gullibility of official political narratives that claim to “save” society. In a sharp criticism of what has happened since March 2020, Ponesse analyses how those who supported lockdowns—who believed the official narrative of fear, as a result of which they were encouraged to push the narrative, even at times cruelly within their own social and professional circles—are now confronted with the fact that everything they supported and enacted was all a lie, discussing this demographic’s compliance to draconian pandemic responses. Noting how internet culture has already trained a generation to lock themselves down with computers and mobile devices, Ponesse discusses the ways in which public opinion became controlled by big tech and major media across most of the planet, manufacturing a homogeneous public health narrative without including any other scientific counterpoints, which she views as the signal that we were collectively being lied to.

Sall Grover, founder and CEO of the female-only social networking app Giggle, examines the escalating conflicts over sex-based rights amid the rise of gender identity ideology. Drawing on her experiences in Hollywood and as a new mother, she traces how institutional capture has enabled males to access women’s prisons, sports and digital spaces, citing a male sex offender housed in an Australian women’s prison and her own protracted legal battle with the Australian Human Rights Commission. The discussion details the complaint lodged by a man who had legally changed his birth certificate to female, the subsequent federal court proceedings, and the broader implications of embedding “gender identity” clauses within sex discrimination law. Grover argues that self-identification policies erase the material reality of sex, undermine single-sex provisions, and constitute a profound form of misogyny by redefining women according to male perceptions of femininity. She critiques media figures and activist campaigns that frame biological sex as bigotry while ignoring evidence of social contagion, rapid-onset gender dysphoria and the disproportionate medicalisation of young females. The conversation also addresses the weaponisation of language, the selective application of inclusion, and the failure of human rights bodies to prioritise female safety. Throughout, broader questions emerge about the erosion of women’s hard-won rights, the role of elite institutions in propagating unexamined ideology, and the practical necessity of female-only spaces in an era when basic definitions of sex are contested. The result is a clear-eyed analysis of how legal fictions and institutional incentives are reshaping everyday protections for women and girls.

Dr Phillip Altman, a retired Pharmacologist with expertise in the areas of clinical medical research and pharmaceutical drug regulatory affairs in Australia, discusses his 10 September 2022 lecture to the Australian Medical Professional Society (AMPS) wherein he criticises the science during the COVID pandemic, announcing, “We, the Australian people, have been deceived—we have been lied to.” Altman elaborates on his career working within this sector, reflecting upon the ideological hold that Big Pharma maintains over medical literature and medical thought while also revealing how he was blind-sided by the manner in which the “iconic medical journals” that inform physicians are highly controlled by Big Pharma. Describing Australia’s recent 17% excess death rate, Altman expounds how few are asking for accountability of these deaths and vituperates the misuse of PCR tests during the pandemic, asking, “What’s the point in measuring all those people if they’re not really sick?” Altman confirms that public health policy should have been driven by hospital admissions for COVID-19 which would have allowed for “a more realistic approach” to addressing this virus, instead of one “driven by fear,” adding, “And that was intentional.” Covering the power of the bureaucrats who drove lockdowns and vaccine mandates around the world, Altman confirms how they achieved their “amazing power by using fear…and they will not let go. And they stay silent regarding vaccine mandates: they know that these vaccines do not prevent infection or transmission of infections…The whole world knows that now—even the CDC and the NIH—they’re saying it. They’ve had to admit now.”

Katherine Deves, an Australian lawyer who ran as a Liberal candidate for the seat of Warringah in the 2022 Australian federal election, discusses how her campaign was in part derailed by her views on gender identity. Framing this ideology as a religion where the god is the “curated identity” of the self, Deves likens the gender identity cult to “Revenge of the Losers”, where people who never had friends at school “have accumulated social capital online” to command public opinion. Accounting for the civil and criminal sanctions in Australia imposed upon those who do not go along with gender identity, Deves elaborates how “transgender vilification” has been incorporated within the anti-discrimination law in New South Wales, where “vilify” can simply be ideological disagreement and where, as Deves notes, even if the accused can successfully defend herself from this criminal charge through the public interest exemption, “the process is the punishment.” Deves also covers how “gender identity” is a protected characteristic at the federal level, noting how, with recent proposed laws in the state of Victoria that say anyone not to affirm someone’s “gender identity”, they could potentially be charged with crime. Deves goes on to analyse how this ideology is “so impoverished” that it has affected our cultures, where from this movement no art or music is produced, where there is “no singing, no community…no joy.” Deves describes how this ideology has created a socio-political environment of nervousness where the current reality is “merciless, heartless and brutal,” as she exposes how many people irrationally go along with this ideology despite having no idea what they are conceding until the moment they find themselves “up against it.”

Michael Biggs, professor of sociology at the University of Oxford, examines the scientific, historical, and political foundations of contemporary gender identity ideology, arguing that the rapid expansion of gender-affirming care for minors has outpaced the quality of evidence supporting it while becoming increasingly resistant to critical scrutiny. Drawing on decades of research into gender dysphoria, demographic trends, and public policy, Biggs traces the evolution of transgender medicine from its early clinical origins through the development of the Dutch Protocol and the subsequent international adoption of medical interventions for children and adolescents. The discussion explores the sharp rise in adolescent gender dysphoria, particularly among teenage girls, the influence of social media and changing cultural norms, and the growing reassessment of treatment protocols by health authorities across Europe. Biggs argues that institutional pressures within academia, medicine, and government have narrowed the scope of legitimate debate, discouraging researchers and clinicians from questioning prevailing assumptions despite mounting concerns over long-term outcomes and safeguarding. The conversation also examines the tension between gender identity ideology and sex-based rights, the relationship between activism and evidence-based policymaking, and the broader implications for academic freedom, scientific integrity, and democratic discourse. Rather than framing the issue as a purely ideological dispute, Biggs situates it within a wider debate over how modern societies evaluate evidence, balance competing rights, and preserve open scientific inquiry on one of the most contentious public policy questions of the twenty-first century.

Leor Sapir, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, discusses two of his articles on the gender debate—“The ‘T’ Piggybacking on the ‘LGB’” and “Transgender Confusions”—covering the policies around public policy, law, and Supreme Court rulings. Beginning with issues such as “bathroom bill” and prisons, Sapir criticises the central tenet of this movement: no debate. Claiming that we are in the throes of a “public mania,” Sapir goes through many of the contradictions within the trans movement’s arguments, such as the claim that the only proper determinant of being a man or a woman is gender, not sex. Noting how the gender movement makes an exception within sports, as, at the very least, acknowledging sex as a reality, Sapir explains how this lobby has no other choice given that the political implications of denying sex would do away with women’s sports entirely. He also demonstrates how this “oppressed minority” has gained pervasive institutional capture within a decade and is anything but “oppressed” as he elaborates the American debate through the gender lobby’s inability to answer basic philosophical and scientific questions. Sapir explores how this movement has managed to build so much momentum “without actually having a coherent philosophical understanding of the human person or without having good scientific evidence for the transitioning of children.”